Rick and Morty are invited to try an experience called "The Hole", where they jump in, face their greatest fears, and have their picture taken. But first they have to figure out what exactly their greatest fears are.
Tropes:
- Absurd Phobia: At one point, Rick triggers the Hole to go through another recursion when he sees the bill for a side of bacon at Denny's is eight dollars. Morty thinks being actually afraid of that is ridiculous, but Rick justifies it as a symptom of his concern about the capitalist economy collapsing (since this Rick is later shown to be a manifestation, it's left ambiguous if he's really afraid of that, though considering Morty might've remembered Rick's capitalistic rant early on, it might make a bit of sense).
- Aesop Amnesia: The stinger shows that despite the lessons learned from the first episode of season 7, Mr. Poopybutthole has returned to finding ways to get back with his family through duplicitous means.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Rick has to turn off the Singing Telegram robot he built to impress Diane when it starts questioning its existence after singing one verse.
- Bait-and-Switch: At the very end, after Morty has told Rick that he saw Diane in the Hole but urges him not to enter, Rick agrees, but then we see him run back to the stall, looking like it's going to be a case of Here We Go Again! where Rick jumps in for his own arc just like Morty did earlier. Instead, it becomes a Pet the Dog moment as he chooses not to do it, and instead just puts Morty's picture up on the Hole's Wall of Fame.
- Bathos: When the Hole's representative is done with his Evil Laugh at the diner, the waiter walks up to tell him he has used the booth for too long when he only bought a single cup of coffee.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: The episode starts when Rick and Morty are not fazed by a spooky haunted house-like attraction at an alien carnival, because they've Seen It All on their adventures, so fake scares aren't scary to them anymore. Morty wishes they could have some "fun" scares once in a while, and he ends up getting his chance with the Hole. However, he ends up on a psychologically draining and humiliating odyssey which mentally messes him up.
- Birds of a Feather: Diane turns out to be a lot like Rick in many ways, such as pondering sci-fi concepts, being very heavy drinkers, and being willing to accept their deaths for the sake of their loved ones. Possibly an invoked trope, since Morty never met Diane, and that's how he can imagine someone who would end up with Rick.
- Bland-Name Product: A Coda Cola machine is visible in the back of the theatre.
- Breaking Old Trends: Unlike most of the latest season finales, this last episode of the season doesn't set up anything important that Rick and Morty will have to face in the future.
- Bring My Brown Pants: Beth notices a smell when Rick and Morty return home. The two admit they shit their pants.
- Broken Record: When Morty hogs the Hole, Diane glitches out and repeats the word "true" over and over.
- Cliffhanger: A mild one in The Stinger, when Mr. Poopybutthole uses a portal gun he stole from Rick to Kill and Replace an alternate self who's still married to Amy, but it's hinted she knows something's off.
- Comically Missing the Point: In order to embarrass himself, Morty hands a Barbaric Bully a list of five things he likes about Jessica. The bully points out the list only has four points on it and calls him an idiot for that, instead of the actual content (which might have been intentional on Morty's part).
- Continuity Nod:
- Beth, Jerry and Summer are watching "Cake or Fake" on TV when Rick and Morty return from the Hole.
- Morty's college look is the 26-year-old version of himself that was created from splitting his age in the season 5 finale after he aged himself up to 40.
- A Day in the Limelight: Even though Diane was explicitly erased from all possible realities by Rick Prime, a version of her still manages to appear in this episode in the Hole. Based on Rick's reactions to her, she is a very good replica of the real thing; although it turns out in the end that both Diane and Rick as they appear in the Hole were not real,
interviews with Ian Cordoni and Spencer Grammar on Inverse
indicate that their dynamic here is similar if not identical to their real relationship. - Door Focus: When Rick and Morty leave the washroom at the Denny's, the shot lingers on to show Morty come running back in and take a leap into the hole. Happens again at the end when it's Rick who comes running back in after the two left the room.
- Dramatic Thunder: Rolls when the mysterious man performs an Evil Laugh at the diner after telling Morty that Rick is gonna die just like Diane.
- Drinking Contest: During their Falling-in-Love Montage, we see Diane and Rick enter (and win) a drinking contest at a Bar Full of Aliens. Who knew Diane was a Hard-Drinking Party Girl?
- Drone of Dread: The Hole (and the Hole Demon) are given this as a theme.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Discussed at the bar. Diane asks Rick when he became such a heavy drinker to which he replies that he kept looking for her at the bottom of the bottle.
- Dude, Not Funny!: In-Universe. When the guy from the hole offers to take them to "the scariest place in the universe" and takes them to a Denny's, Rick and Morty are surprisingly offended ("This is punching down. Denny’s is a nice chain that gives people starchy food when they’re up late.") until they figure out that the Denny's is merely where said place is housed.
- Emotion Eater: The Hole feeds on fear, which its representative compares to fish nibbling on dead skin cells.
- Epiphanic Prison: The Hole only lets Morty out after he realizes his true greatest fear. Afterwards, Rick notices that Morty seems "less burdened" by the experience. Morty however found it all too mentally exhausting to recommend the experience for Rick.
- Escapism: Rick immediately realizes the Diane that appears in the house is a manifestation of the Hole, but he nonetheless plays along to see if it'll get him and Morty out of the Hole. However, he starts to genuinely bond with Diane and decides living with a fake wife is better than never seeing his wife again, even as the Hole seems to be sucking away his life essence. However, it later turns out Rick was also a manifestation, as part of a ploy by the Hole to have Morty face his worst fear, rendering the whole scenario moot.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The Fear Hole is a hole that shows you your fears.
- Expy: A gentleman who looks and sounds like Rod Serling introduces Rick and Morty to the Hole which is said to make them face their greatest fears.
- Face Your Fears: The Fear Hole is a pit located in the washroom of a Denny's which manifests the worst fears of anyone who jumps in it. However, rather than just showing the fear straight away, it concocts a complex and often lengthy series of scenarios that requires the person to figure out what the fear being shown is and only lets the person go once they confront and figure out their own worst fear out of all fears, something the person themselves may not even know.
- Rick defies this by walking away from the Hole after finding out what it is, but Morty, who wants to find out what his biggest fear is so he can overcome it, invokes this by jumping in. By the end, once he's successfully done so, he is simultaneously "less burdened" (as Rick puts it), but also seems more mentally exhausted than ever by all the Mind Screw stuff he saw there, and insists that Rick shouldn't try it himself.
- Rick defies it again when he almost jumps in himself after Morty tells him he saw Diane there, only to then choose to honor Morty's request and not to go through with it.
- Feedback Rule: When Rick hands Morty the mic on stage, it promptly gives off a feedback sound the moment Morty starts his Piss-Take Rap.
- Finger-Tenting: The mysterious man is making this ominous gesture in the backseat of Rick's shuttle when the trio arrives at the Denny's.
- Foreshadowing: There's a few hints about the true greatest fear the hole wants addressed.
- Rick is never actually seen jumping into the Hole from the outside, he just falls into Morty's view while he's already in the Hole after Morty cries out for him.
- Morty asks what Diane coming back has to do with him. Rick responds after a pause that perhaps Morty's greatest fear is that Rick will find happiness again and no longer need him, claiming that Morty's getting scared just talking about it. Morty adamantly denies it.
- Rick states that they cannot know for sure without more data, starting a long montage of Rick and Diane reuniting and falling in love while Morty feels increasingly sidelined. He also notes that he's only doing it for Morty, so the sooner he finishes his romance arc Morty can focus on his fear of being a "useless, lonely little turd".
- As Rick shows signs of deterioration, Morty theorizes his greatest fear is watching Rick die. Rick, a manifestation of the hole says he likes this theory, telling him to stop watching. This leads Morty to another encounter with the Rod Sterling Expy who gives further hints that fear of losing happiness and the inevitability of losing a loved one is the central theme of the episode. He also claims that Morty does not matter, dismissing him as a secondary character.
Hole's Avatar: Hmm. You are hard to scare.- Rick's arc parallels Morty's, confessing that his greatest fear is letting a loved one go. In the end when confronted by Diane about the possibility of losing her again and whether or not Morty is even real, Rick chooses to sacrifice himself for Morty.
- The final sequence entails Rick and Morty trying to figure out whether or not they are in the hole include Rick asking Morty to confess his fears, Morty confessing that he's afraid he's responsible for Rick's sadness, Morty seeing a montage of him growing up (and apart from Rick) until he realizes he's afraid of becoming normal like his father (struggling with a mundane life in the corporate world and with age).
- Fountain of Youth: Rick turns young again after injecting himself with an anti-aging serum.
- The Freelance Shame Squad: Invoked by Morty when he hands his list about Jessica to the school bully. The latter points out that Morty missed a fifth point and suddenly all bystanders start laughing.
- The Game Never Stopped: Numerous cases with Rick and Morty seeming to figure out their fears and escape the Hole, only to realize they're still stuck in it.
- The first one is pretty obvious when Rick and Morty just fight some generic monsters and seemingly escape, only to get home and have a younger version of Rick and Diane appear through a portal before them, at which point they promptly conclude they're still in it.
- Once they seemingly both conquer their fears at the end of the second act, they appear to escape, only to go through repeated loops of experiencing or realizing another fear and finding themselves back at the exit of the Hole.
- In one iteration, they decide their fear is of being trapped in the Hole forever, and resolve to just stop worrying about it, which will let them conquer that fear and keep living their lives. They go through a Time-Passes Montage...until Morty reaches middle age and realizes he's become his dad, which turns out to be another fear of his and brings him back to the Hole once again.
- Ultimately, though, the biggest twist turns out to be Morty's true biggest fear: that he continues to rely on Rick despite his underlying worry that his grandpa might not really care about him. He then realizes that Rick was never even in the Hole with him at all, and this is proven true when he emerges from it for real, as Rick tells him that only one person can enter at a time.
- A Glitch in the Matrix: When Morty acknowledges his fear, their reality goes slightly dark and vibrates. As Morty continues doing so, eventually the Hole has to focus its attention on him and Diane starts glitching out.
- Hannibal Lecture: Morty confronts the Man representing the Hole, and though he tries to affect a demeanor similar to Rick where he mocks what the Hole is doing as dumb, the Man doesn't miss a beat shooting back that Morty is the dumb one for missing the point of how the Hole is preying on Rick's fears and that Morty's only kept around to keep Rick there. Of course, this later turned out to be a bluff to invoke Morty's fear.
- Happy Rain: It starts raining when Rick and Diane kiss in the back alley.
- Humanoid Abomination: The mysterious man who introduces Rick and Morty to the Hole turns out to be an extension of the Hole, luring potential prey to itself to feed on their fears. When a VHS recording of the man is viewed by the title pair, his eyes briefly turn into black pits at the end.
- Imposter Forgot One Detail: Mr. Poopybutthole holds his utensils with the opposite hands as the one he replaced (fork in the left hand, as opposed to fork in the right) and may have bungled the hug with his alternate wife, contributing to her Spotting the Thread.
- It Won't Turn Off: During the music montage at the end, Rick is shown having invented a beer bottle dispensing machine that doesn't turn off even when he presses the off button.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Rick mentions that they may be still crawling out of the hole two seasons from now.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: The Hole slowly kills the two the longer they stay in there. Even though Morty warns Rick that the Hole is feeding off of him and he will die, Rick doesn't care if it means he gets to have Diane back. However, it's later shown that this is a trick perpetrated by the Hole in order to get Morty to face and eventually realize his true fear.
- Mic Drop: Subverted. After Morty fails miserably at rapping on stage, he at least tries to finish off on a cool note by casually dropping the mic. However, Rick catches the mic before it hits the ground.
- Not Afraid to Die: The idea that he might still be trapped in the Hole which is feeding off him and eventually killing him does not faze Rick. However, while he is not afraid to die, he is afraid of Morty actually dying which is what convinces him to let go of Diane. However, it's not made clear if this is what the real Rick would've done as it later turns out this version of Rick was a manifestation of the Hole, although the end does show the real Rick strongly tempted to jump into the Hole after hearing Morty saw Diane in it.
- No, You: The mysterious man pulls this when Morty calls the fear of happiness dumb, pointing out that Morty hasn't thought things through enough to get it.
- Out-of-Character Alert: When Rick tells Morty that he would never leave him behind in the Hole because he's "irreplaceable", Morty realizes his true fear: that Rick doesn't truly care for him and does consider him to be expendable. Then he realizes Rick never even entered the Hole, because he would never be that warm and open to him.
- Pet the Dog:
- Once Rick responds to Morty's question with Something Only They Would Say and the latter realizes he's escaped the Hole for real, he gives his grandpa a big hug. Rick looks a bit weirded out and like he doesn't know how to respond, but rather than untangling himself from Morty or making any kind of snarky comment about it, he stays quiet, accepts the hug, and even looks like he's on the verge of awkwardly returning it before Morty tells him not to (because then he won't know if he's really escaped or not).
- An understated one. Morty admits that he saw Diane in the Hole, but discourages Rick from going in himself, asking his grandpa to trust him on this. Rick rushes back into the bathroom a moment later, looking like he's going to defy this request and jump in anyway so he can see her again...but then, in a moment that nicely highlights his Character Development, he decides not to, indeed showing his trust in his grandson, and instead just takes a photo of Morty out of his wallet and puts it on the "Escaped the Hole" picture board before leaving.
- Phlebotinum Overload: Morty deliberately places himself in situations he fears to monopolize the Hole's attention, in turn draining his own lifeforce, to snap Rick out of his happiness.
- Piss-Take Rap: Morty trying rap on stage goes as well as you would imagine.
- Reconstruction: Of the Cruel Twist Ending subgenre that the show has taken liberal potshots within the likes of "Something Ricked This Way Comes" and "Never Ricking Morty". The Fear Hole's representative never loses his composure, and despite Morty's weariness and familiarity with associated tropes, he's completely taken for a ride, perhaps to an even greater extent than if he had just been completely witless like the Genre Blind that he and Rick usually look down on. It is best represented in the scene where Morty confronts the representative and displays the usual Take That! attitude the show usually aims at a particular target. Not only is the representative not threatened by this knowledge in anyway, he manages to pull off a Breaking Lecture that makes it clear that Morty's Genre Savvy isn't (nor does it) going to protect from what's coming.
- Recursive Reality: Just when they think they're out of The Hole...they realize they're still in it.
- Reduced to Dust: The version of Rick that crashes through the ceiling with Diane turns into dust a few seconds later as the purple flame consumes him.
- The Reveal: The Rick that Morty and the audience see in the Hole is All Just a Dream—specifically, all part of Morty's Face Your Fears vision quest. Once Morty finally figures out his true fear and escapes the Hole for good, the real Rick tells him that the Hole is a "one-person ride" because multiple people being in there simultaneously may generate fears that cancel each other out.
- Riddle for the Ages: The Hole has existed since at least the mid-90s, but only three people have ever put their picture on the wall to declare they've conquered it. Whether that means only three people ever attempted it, everyone else died somehow (it's never clarified what happens to people who fail to face their greatest fear or if that's even possible), or they were simply too mentally drained after escaping to care about putting up their photo (like Morty was) isn't shown.
- Also, who and what exactly is the mysterious suited man who represents the Hole? He's never really explained or given a name.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: Morty eventually realizes the Rick who's been in the Hole with him is just a manifestation and not actually the real deal, because he fears the real Rick isn't the sort of person who'd jump in after him to save him and would instead just stand there and watch. However, once Morty escapes the Hole and finds that Rick did indeed stay outside and watch him in it, the latter tells him that he didn't enter himself because it's a one-person experience that won't work if multiple people go in at once (since the greatest fears would obviously differ a lot between different people). Then again, the person who brought them to the Hole didn't actually mention anything like that, and neither did the video or the waiter, nor there is anything around the Hole to force a one-person ride, so it's very possible that it's just Rick's rationalization.
- Safety in Indifference: Indirectly stated by the man representing the Hole, saying that the intelligent fear happiness because they know happiness inevitably ends.
- Seen It All: Lampshaded by the mysterious man who mentions that there are only a few real fears left to conquer for seasoned adventurers like Rick and Morty.
- Sentimental Music Cue: An emotional song accompanies the montage of Morty growing into an adult.
- Smash Cut: When Rick and Morty first climb out of the hole, the former states that "there's a 100% chance that we're still..." *loud impact sound and cut back to them in the dark hole*
- Spiders Are Scary:
- Jerry is deeply terrified of a spider in the kitchen.
- Discussed later when Morty eventually wakes up from his Vision Quest and Rick asks him unwittingly if his fear was spiders.
- Spiritual Antithesis: To "M. Night Shaym-Aliens!", with The Reveal that the Rick we've spent most of the episode with being the fake instead of Morty this time around. Also, while Rick knew that he was inside a simulation the entire time, Morty only finds it out at the very end of the episode.
- The Stinger: Mr. Poopybutthole returns, having stolen one of Rick's portal guns. He uses it to replace a version of himself still married to his wife, though she clearly suspects something is wrong.
- Straw Nihilist: The Hole representative, or at least the version the hallucination shows Morty, goes at length about how the inevitable end of happiness makes it pointless to pursue, if not better to avoid altogether.
- Sudden Morbid Monologue: The Hole Representative's monologue to Morty about how Rick's fear of happiness is what's draining his life force and how happiness itself inevitably ends.
- Supernaturally Delicious and Nutritious: The Hole's representative comments in the introduction video that the Hole feeds on the fear of the people who go in, and makes it a point to mention that Morty's fear is delicious.
- Take That!: Subverted. When the Hole's representative directs Rick and Morty to a Denny's, they assume it's an insult towards the restaurant chain, which they consider a low blow for a perfectly respectable restaurant chain. Their worst insult is that the food is "starchy", and they still acknowledge it's filling a niche.
- Taped-Over Turmoil: The promotional video for The Hole apparently was taped over a Mountain Dew commercial with Muammar Gaddafi.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich: The Hole is located in a Denny's; Rick and Morty initially think they were duped of its existence and decide to just order food, but the waiter informs them of the Hole in the men's washroom right before they're about to start eating, and the episode ends before they decide to resume their meal.
- Time-Passes Montage: Near the end when Morty thinks he's gotten out of the Hole, he seems to go through one of these while deciding not to worry about if he's still in it or not, showing up growing up, graduating from college, and living his life...until he looks in the mirror, sees that he looks just like Jerry, and states that "I've become my dad!", at which point he snaps back to the Hole again as this is shown to be another one of his fears.
- Trickster Mentor: The Hole is arguably this. It lures people in to feed off of their greatest fears, but as the "How to Hole" video states, this is a mutually beneficial relationship for those who manage to emerge from it, since it lets them figure out their biggest fear and conquer it. It doesn't show the user their greatest fear directly, but takes them on a vision quest that includes them facing down many other, lesser fears they may have—and moving past those as well—to realize, accept, and overcome the biggest one. It's a mentally exhausting experience, as Morty's reaction at the end shows, but ultimately leaves them "less burdened" and allows for some Character Development.
- Sink or Swim Mentor: It's never made entirely clear whether the Hole feeding on its victims' fear kills them if they fail to conquer it, and if there are so few pictures on the board because this is what happened to most people who entered it. If that is the case, the Hole would double as this kind of mentor, but it's not the only explanation.
- True Art Is Angsty: After Rick and Morty's joint rap performance onstage, the avant-garde-loving Straw Critic from the New York Times deems the performance incredible, noting that Rick and Morty's nudity made the play "serious and good".
- Turning Into Your Parent: One of Morty's fears is that he'll eventually turn out just like his dad (done by way of a Mirror Scare suddenly showing him with Jerry's face).
- The Unreveal:
- Morty eventually realizes his true biggest fear is that Rick doesn't care about him and considers him expendable, allowing him to escape the Hole for good. He then asks the real Rick if he considers him irreplaceable, but Rick only provides a Non-Answer by asking Morty to more specifically define the word "irreplaceable". However, Morty is actually happy to hear this because it's Something Only He Would Say (especially given the multiversal revelations revealed to the both of them in the past) and proves he really did escape the Hole, and the end has a Pet the Dog moment to reaffirm that yes, Rick does care about Morty even if he has trouble saying it.
- Because it turns out that Rick never actually went into the Hole and in the end chooses not to on Morty's advice, we never find out what his biggest fear really is.
- Vision Quest: The Hole puts Morty through a series of different scenarios in order to help him realize his greatest fear.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Rick and Diane take turns puking into a barrel after winning an alien Drinking Contest.
- "What Do They Fear?" Episode: A very interesting variant where it is not made clear for most of the episode what exactly Rick and Morty fear.
- There are a lot of theories such as Rick being reunited with Diane because he fears actually getting her back and being happy, Rick getting sick because of the Hole feeding on him because Morty is afraid of him dying, Rick leaving Morty to be with Diane because Morty fears Rick abandoning him and so on.
- It's finally revealed near the end that Morty's biggest fear is that he relies too much on Rick and that the latter doesn't really care about him; however, since Rick never actually jumped in the Hole with him (as only one person could enter at a time) and doesn't end up doing so, we don't find out for sure what his is.
- Year Inside, Hour Outside: It can take the equivalent of many years inside the Hole to conquer your fears; in one cycle Morty turns from teenager to middle-aged and it still doesn't end. How long it was to an outsider isn't clear, but it's implied to have been only a few minutes at most.
